Hand and Glove

May 8, 2017

Hand and Glove

Shout joyful praises to God, all the earth!

Sing about the glory of his name!

    Tell the world how glorious he is.

Psalm 66:1-2

In my meditation on Psalm 65 I noted, “For many years the church has been retreating from the public sector and making the Christian faith a matter of personal and private piety.” This retreat is also occurring within local churches. Each year fewer members are active in their local church. In the area where I live, I picked four churches at random, and found the average attendance was 40% of their membership. I suspect that may be higher than most areas. For most churches, only 25% to 30% of those who attend worship services are actively involved in the ministries of their church.

The first half of Psalm 66 is devoted to the corporate life of Israel as the people of God. The psalmist’s personal piety is the subject of the second half of the psalm. This can be a good model for us because the effectiveness of our witness for Christ, through our participation in the life of our church, is conditioned upon the quality of our personal piety. Our participation in the life of the church can also be an encouragement to more fully develop our personal relationship with Christ.

The Apostle Paul stressed the importance of unity in the Body of Christ. Much like Psalm 66, Paul divided Philippians 2 by stressing both corporate and personal piety. He begins with a call for the church to work “together with one mind and purpose” (Philippians 2:2). He then launches in to a call for personal piety, “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had” (Philippians 2:5). He then returns to his theme of corporate unity.

As we seek the life in Christ as our way of life, our personal devotional life and our participation in the life of our church go together, hand and glove. The more we make it our goal to grow in these areas, the closer we come to the time “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.